GuitarBob
Joined: 09 Jul 2006 |
Posts: 9 |
Location: USA |
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Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 2:44 pm |
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Avast is a much better AV than ClamWin. It scans your computer in real-time as you surf the internet. ClamWin only scans on-demand when you tell it to or when you have scheduled a scan. Avast is a commercial company with lots of employees, money, and a regular development program. ClamWin has 2 developers who work on the project for free in their spare time. Avast is a better AV for business use, but only home users are supposed to use the free version.
I use ClamWin because I support free software, and I like an AV that I can have some input into. Commercial AV users have to take what their AV company gives them. They do have some input, but the profit motive is most important in a commercial AV. For instance, Avast outsourced their customer service (for bot free version and commercial verson) to a company in India. The Indian company tried to "upsell" the free users, and earn money for services the users did not need. When there were too many complaints from the users, Avast said they were "reevaluating" their relationship with the Indian company, but as far as I know, they have not terminated the relationship. If you have problems with ClamWin, you can get free support here in these forums.
If you want to use ClamWin, you should also use a real-time AV. This gives you an extra layer of protection, as ClamWin makes a good backup AV. You could look into the free Clam Sentinel program (a separate project from ClamWin), which lets you use ClamWin as a real-time scanner. and it has its own heuristic scan engine that can find malware for which there is no ClamWin signature. Clam Sentinel can be used for free by anyone. It has not been used very much on networks, but it runs on
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, XP, Vista, and Windows 7 computers.
For business protection, however, your best bet is a commercial AV.
Regards,
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